Funding available to support PhD research into small business and cultural heritage interpretation partnerships in the Digital Economy

A team of Digital Economy members have just been awarded a Vice Chancellor’s Award to recruit a PhD student who is interested in researching this topic. A grant of £7K p.a. for 3 years (or pro rata for part time work) will be available to cover fees and contribute towards living costs. The project needs to begin before 1st December 2012.

This project provides an opportunity for the successful student to provide significant practical value to local heritage sites and representatives from the creative industries, while drawing upon multi-disciplinary academic perspectives such as:

Digital marketing and online community development

Innovation and creativity in high tech firms

Archaeology

Visual communications

The successful applicant will develop a project to manage new digital communities around local heritage sites. The objective is to encourage visitors to engage more specifically with these sites and appreciate the stories they have to tell, by updating what are often rather old fashioned displays with creative applications of digital technologies. This might involve, for example, partnering with small businesses with expertise in augmented reality, virtual worlds, video, touch screens, mobile apps, serious gaming etc. Technologies such as motion capture allow sophisticated approaches to the 3D reconstruction of heritage sites, and when taken together with augmented reality applications, they provide new opportunities to enhance our understanding and appreciation of what living at these places must have been like for the benefit of both visitors and scholars.

The project will explore mechanisms for building industrial/ cultural heritage partnerships to increase footfall, improve visitor experience and engage new demographics. Southampton’s unique expertise at the interface of the web, design, HCI, marketing and innovation and cultural heritage will enable an innovative piece of work to be completed while stimulating new collaborative research across the faculties. The topic is one which has considerable public, industrial, academic and third sector impact potential.

Day of Archaeology

How to Get Involved

Interested?

We are looking for people working, studying or volunteering in the archaeological world to participate with us in a “Day of Archaeology”. The resulting Day of Archaeology website will demonstrate the wide variety of work our profession undertakes day-to-day across the globe, and help to raise public awareness of the relevance and importance of archaeology to the modern world. We want anyone with a personal, professional or voluntary interest in archaeology to get involved, and help show the world why archaeology is vital to protect the past and inform our futures.

How you can help

We are looking for archaeologists who are, on Friday 29 July, able to document their day and send it to us to publish here on the Day of Archaeology website. You can do this through any medium that you are comfortable with, be it writing about, filming, recording or photographing your day.

If you can’t make Friday, you can still contribute up to a week after the Day of Archaeology. If you would like to take part but don’t feel confident writing a blog or uploading photos/film, please get in touch with us and we can help.

How to Sign Up

Email us if you would like to take part, and we will be in touch about how to submit your entry.

As of 12pm on July 12th, account details have been sent via email to everyone who has expressed an interest in signing up and contributing to the project. We now have 244 people willing to document their day, and we’ve even had the first post from Maev Kennedy (Guardian archaeology correspondent) which will go live at 00:01 on the 29th. If you want to contribute, you can still sign up, just email dayofarchaeology@gmail.com